


A Vice of Mercy

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-27
Updated: 2011-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An alternative version of Shepherd Book's history--and of his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Vice of Mercy

**Part One**   
TROILUS: _Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,  
Which better fits a lion than a man._ (Troilus and Cressida, V, iii, 37-8)

While mid-life burnout is a problem, most of the Parliamentary Operations Executive's personnel troubles occur at the beginning or the end of a career. Some of the employees prudently provide for what will happen to them when they lose a step, slow down just a trifle. They climb their way up, hand over hand clinging to the handles of knives driven into their friends' backs, to secure leadership positions for themselves. But there would be no fun in supervising if there were more supervisors than those to be ordered around.

Some of the ex-agents make good on their oft-expressed desire to open a bed and breakfast in some placidly lovely resort town. But there's always the risk that they'll get bored, and sketch out their memoirs between batches of hodgeberry scones, or that some subversive will whisper in their ears.

Most Operational assignments call for quickness and perception: a young man's game. But years of listening for footsteps in dark alleys and the minute tremors in a liar's voice do train the ears: a mature man's cunning. The lessons of the Academy are, by their nature, somewhat impractical, their circumstances too controlled.

The Parliamentary Operations Executive's clever solution to all those problems is to assign one novice and one near-emeritus agent to certain important tasks that have not attained the highest priority. Generally, that means assassinations. If the first team fails, a second can be sent in. The target will, after all, be a long time dead, whereas kidnaps and extreme interrogations are more likely to be time-critical. And if the first team fails…it's a good death. Sometimes there is shame in that, but it reduces the Executive's pension account (or, rather, enhances the funds available to the survivors) and proves that they did not merit their service.

"Hello," the young man said, in a cultured, quiet voice. His dark round face shone with innocence. "It's good to meet you. Sometimes…it was tiring to be the only raisin in the rice pudding, you might say."

"I've seen your records, son. Very impressive. Fourth in your class."

"I had little to distract me," the young man said. The Academy, like the Pony Express before it, prefers orphans.

The job went fairly well. The young man didn't hesitate, but the knife wasn't planted quite correctly. The target (whoever he was; it was all as anonymous as a blowjob in a bathhouse) died only after the older man's hand (almond over coffee) guided the neophyte's. There were times in the Disposal phase when they heard noises, but no one pursued them.

When they went back to their hotel room, there were a few smears of blood on the blue gingham of the younger man's shirt cuff. So he took off the shirt (he didn't own many others) to rinse it in cold water, and he wore nothing beneath it.

If he was old enough for this employment, he was old enough to drink from the bottle Room Service sent up. It was the first time he had ever gotten drunk, whether the two of them were celebrating or keeping out the cold or firing out spirits.

And what happened afterwards was the first time too. Not that such things were not done at the Academy, but there was something remote about the young man. And at the time the older man didn't care if he was initiating or despoiling or reveling or protecting or sacrificing or they were now on a par, two lonely men in search of warmth. And what, exactly, is a boy's virginity? It can't be proven in court.

Later, there was an avalanche of remorse. (Just a little sound can cause an avalanche.) If you can disappear well enough to frustrate the Executive's efforts to find you, they leave you to it, with their blessing.

So he went from a place where they take away your name to one where they give you one. It was a place that stretched like a membrane across which secrets passed but went no further. He knelt, and whispered, "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

 **Part Two**  
TROILUS: _'Tis our mad sister. I do know her voice._ (II, ii, 99)

After a dozen years or so in the Abbey, Book realized that he was gazing at an empty altar. Perhaps it had always been empty. It could be that he no longer needed a remedy for his soul's sickness. The abscess had grown shallower and shallower over time and finally healed. Or maybe, from God's perspective, it was all just a bad blind date. Despairing of ever getting a word in, He went home.

In many ways, boarding Serenity proved to be a good choice. Far from being an old gaffer shuffled to the chimney corner, Mal's abrasive blasphemy polished Book's sermons. He had heathens aplenty, although Book noticed that Inara was conscientious in her religious duties. That disturbed him a little, because he expected any religion in which he wasn't sure he believed to have Jesus at its center.

Book was a useful member of the community, which had frequent use for his canny lore, whether it involved crushed rosemary or hot lead. The crisis came because River got steadily worse—no, not steadily, but she improved only enough for hope to become a strappado. Simon had run out of pills, injections, and worst of all, rational explanations. The repeated assaults on River's brain should have subtracted abilities, not engrafted preternatural ones. As for the languages she knew but couldn't have, she had always been brilliant. But the nonsense, and the blasphemy, and the endless, pure, bestial roaring? The postures that bent her limbs in impossible ways? The strength that could snap a spine with half a hand? Fiery arrows of insight that could pierce a soul? Where did those come from?

The plight of the brother and sister would have wrung Book's heart in any case. And Simon was young, and looked younger. He was beautiful and devotion burned his eyes blue as a Bunsen burner, madder than a candle.

Who sins most, the tempter or the tempted, ha?

River, all her muscles in spasm, floated above the bed. HELP ME, said the letters that popped out of her skin.

Book had been ordained to all the degrees. Priest. Monk. Deacon. Acolyte.

Exorcist.

He prayed, conditionally (but aren't crossed fingers still a cross?) He was genuinely surprised when the demon **did** come out of her. And only surprised for a moment how much it resembled himself as a young man. Perhaps he was once that dapper. He liked to think that any madness that burned in him, did so more discreetly. Book could never have been a bounty hunter. As a zealot, or a civil servant, call it what you will, he had no commercial motivation for any particular infliction. And he hoped that when his mother had thought of him, it was without bitterness. But he had humped half an innocent, and where did that leave him?

But clearly, it was River's demon as well as his. She was jealous of Kaylee and Simon, so one was threatened, one punished, with an unwanted penetration. She had to disarm Mal's wariness, so when she stretched out her hand to Mal he took it, and gave her permission to come aboard.

Meanwhile, Book knew what could happen. When Early struck down his body, there was a gap across which the spark could leap. "Well, Lord," Book said, pillowed in the heavens, "Here I am. Forgive what sins you can, and let me walk on."

 _Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,  
And fluctuate twixt blind hopes and blind despairs,  
And fancy that we put forth all our life,  
And never know how with the soul it fares._

 _Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,  
Upon our life a ruling effluence send.  
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die;  
And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end._  
(Matthew Arnold, "Palladium")

**Author's Note:**

> Not a full-scale fusion, but suggested by "The Exorcist."


End file.
